


Breathe for Them

by Firedawn (Serpyre)



Series: Don't [1]
Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Genre: Gaslighting, Heavy Angst, Historical Retelling, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Katherine's Origin Story, Trigger Warnings, Victim Blaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21832501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serpyre/pseuds/Firedawn
Summary: She does not remember when she starts screaming in her sleep. But, if Katherine were to point where it all began, then she would point here.Or, Katherine Howard's life in history, retold again.
Series: Don't [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1576483
Comments: 27
Kudos: 110





	Breathe for Them

**Author's Note:**

> This is my take on Katherine Howard’s story historically. As is usual for Katherine Howard's origin stories, it will be angsty/painful/just… all of it. I just couldn’t get this out of my head, just like how I can’t get All You Wanna Do out of my head… 
> 
> **Heavy trigger warnings for rape, victim-blaming, denigration of rape victims (a lot), gaslighting, and suicidal ideation.**

First there was Mannox. He was a music teacher her father had hired. He began right away, showing her lutes and virginals and how to use them. She didn’t think she’d learn other things as well.

Your nimble fingers, he would praise. Katherine would blush every time. But sometimes, she’d fumble over the notes, get some wrong. Then his eyes would shift. No, that is not how you do it. Let me try.

(She does not remember when she starts screaming in her sleep. But, if Katherine were to point where it all began, then she would point here.)

.

She’s sent to the Dutchess of Dowager. That is where she meets Francis Dereham.

The men have a set of keys for the girls’ bedchambers. They enter every fortnight. They always looked hungry—their eyes change, like animals. Katherine would hear squeals, and screams, and the noises would blur so that she could not tell if they were exuberant or terrified.

She loves Dereham. He sneaks into the chambers every night. Just to see you, he would say. I would get in trouble just for you. Katherine knows what he needs from her. She thanks him—profusely, of course, and then his eyes go a shade black. He starves every night for you, of course she loves him.

He gives her a hundred pounds to remain in place and to wait for him as he goes away to Ireland. She latches onto him. He, she tells the girls, giddy, look at all he does for me! She was the star of his life. She was who he revolved around. He tells her: you are my wife. She replies: I am your wife.

They are married: they are as-good-as. He loves her and she does him. He loves her every night and she lets him. He razes her like an animal; he tears her apart, rips her open, and she bites down her screams so hard she draws blood.

He is always happy after and kisses her forehead. Thanks her profusely, after. As she shivers on her bed and waits until she is less-in-pain to clean up his mess.

(Katherine Howard does not have a term for what Francis Dereham does to her until 600 years later; gaslighting, they call it now.)

.

She’s brought up-high in Court. Her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, says: you should serve Anna of Cleves, the soon-to-be Fourth Wife of Henry. So she does.

Anna is kind to her, and Katherine has her ear. She listens to Anna rant about Henry: _he dressed himself up and pounced on me with kisses—the first time he saw me!_

She curses away in German: words so excoriating that would kill even in tone.

Katherine doesn’t think it’s really allowed, but Anna does not care. Katherine likes that about her. She does not care about what they say. They will not force Anna into anything. Anna would not let them.

Soon, Anna divorces Henry, and Katherine has no Queen to wait to. She remains in Court. But her rise is fast because she catches Henry’s eye. He turns his love to her: she is not like any other woman. She is his jewel of womanhood. She is his.

Her family is happy: they tell you to keep captivating the King. Keep doing what it is you are doing, they tell her. Keep his interest. Make him marry you. She swallows the traces of resistance in her. She lets it fall under the sea’s tides. She lets it rest with the corpses under.

He marries her. Their ceremony is on the day she turns seventeen; Cromwell is executed the same day for raising Anna to be Henry’s royal Queen. Henry, after it is all said and done, imposes a motto on her. _No other wish but his._

Her family celebrates. Look! Katherine Howard is the new Queen. She brings honour to our family, to the royal name. Look— her beauty, her power, her ability! She has seduced the King.

.

And then she catches Culpepper’s.

.

They blackmail her first. _Your past,_ Katherine, they suggest to her in their eyes. _Your_ _“perfect honesty”_ , Katherine _. Your immaculate purity._

So she raises them in Court. Joan Bulmer. Francis Dereham. There is a cascade of names—she stops keeping track after the fifth, six letter.

They populate the Court. They thank her profusely. They ask favours. They have a glint in their eyes that tells her what will happen if she doesn’t listen.

Culpepper watches her. One day, he sends her a letter: he mentions Dereham’s name. He asks to meet. She goes. He asks again. And again. And again. She brings Jane Rochford along: she can’t be alone with him. Not again; not anymore.

It escalates. Until she has to pen letters to him. Back-and-forth. Promising herself to him; for a secret he would so easily tell. 

(Sometimes, Katherine wonders, when Henry’s gone and she’s alone at night: how did she get here? How is she here? How was she— left up-high, with only shadows and men for company.)

.

(This is when Katherine realises. She is a rose without a thorn because she does not resist. She only has beauty; she has no barbs. She is only passive; she will not fight back. Not against their will. That is all they value in her life.)

.

Her uncle turns his back on her first. You deserve to be burned, he says, begging Henry to let him stay in the position he is in. He knew nothing of your whorish games.

Her family, lavish in Henry’s goods, fall away from her next. One after another, they promise: they knew nothing of your promiscuity. Knew nothing about your past. Knew nothing of your whorish games.

Her Court rises against her; in waves and waves of opposition, of theories, of rumours and of truths. That wanton-slut. I saw her let Dereham pull her dress above her naval. I hear she forced Culpepper to love her, that lewd and naughty Queen. How she bends the honour of men! Was she still such a prostitute then? She appointed us at Court. Just how stupid is she? To think that we wouldn’t let the truth spiral?

She seduced Culpepper. Empty-headed sexpot. She was the aggressor, not the victim. What a common whore. We knew about your games, Katherine. You cannot hide any longer.

They leave. They leave her with Mannox and Dereham and Culpepper and Henry. (No—stop—please. She wasn’t—no, she can’t—)

They leave her with their words and a scoff. They leave her with a mirror and a reflection of a whore. They strip her: her titles, her royalty, her name, her dignity, her value, her self-worth, her life—

Until she is naked, and shivering, and alone. With only demons and men for company at night.

.

Say she married Francis Dereham and she’ll live. She’ll be exiled, and disgraced, and slandered, and excoriated, and alone for the rest of her life. But she’ll be alive.

(Katherine was fifteen when she made him promise. He had money, and her father was struggling to keep your family afloat. She needed to marry to support them. Mannox couldn’t marry her, after all. And Dereham wanted her.)

He will live. He raped her. He will be honoured. He will live with her. He will rise. He will touch her every night.

“We are married,” she would say, “valid in the Church’s eyes.” He would agree. They would agree, too. Nobody sees her mind. Her past. Her life.

They’ll pardon her. They’ll say: fine. They’ll force you to live with him. They’ll force you to be there with him. They’ll force you back on his bed and force you to bleed. To the end of your life.

(When they ask Katherine whether if there was a precontract—that is when she first fights back.)

.

She is in the Tower of London.

(Cranmer had entered, the hours before dusk settled into night. Pity awash on his face; he had taken every sharp object from the prison. He saw the knife, gripped tight, and his face fell. He tugged it from her, whispering: Katherine, please. Let me have that.

If you’d truly pitied me, she cried back, then you would let me have my knife.)

Shadows play with the moonlight. They dance upon her fingers; sway with the words the night whispers. This is your fate, Katherine. Your deserving fate. For all your sin: you must die.

No, she is terrified. It is her end—she is terrified. She is eighteen. She barely lived a life. (But— didn’t she? She had four men in her life already, at her tender age. She had married the King. She was draped in riches, in titles, in glory. She had lived her best life. Was it not her fault that it fell away?)

Tomorrow would be her day of death.

She cannot scream. She mustn’t: it is not dignified, it does not suit a Queen. She must die with honour. She must.

A stone, she asks, hoarsely. Please. I need to practice.

.

She is led up the dais, examined by the eyes of the waiting crowd. They must see her: and the words of rumours, of truths, must reverberate in their head. Katherine cannot bring herself to look at them.

She is familiar with the slab of stone there. They let her walk of her own accord, but she knows if she slows even in a step, their pikes will jab her back. So she keeps the queenly pretence. She maintains that this is of her own will, as much as it is theirs. She walks.

They are cold, at least. The crowd. Their eyes run over her. Hungry. For her last words to sate their appetite. For her to see Christ and his justice. For her eyes.

She exhales the words. Henry. Praise for Henry. When all she wants to do is scream.

Katherine is steadfast. She speaks; yet, her eyes speak for her. I didn’t do it because I wanted to. They wanted to. They wanted me to.

Please understand. 

She forgives the executioner. He promises her a fast death: she nods, as she closes her eyes, and he blindfolds her. She’ll meet him in heaven; if heaven is just.

Katherine is led to the block. She positions her head, like how she remembers it in practice: die dignified, die with honour, die like you still have value, have a name, die like a Queen should, die quiet—without protest, die to his wish, his will.

Do not die screaming.

.

She is dead. She suffuses with the ethereal stink of the dead. She drifts amongst proleptic corpses, of suspended souls. She has her name, she has her life with her. But she is not judged nor condemned. She has no voice, but neither do they. She is not alone with them.

And then she breaks through water—

She lets loose a cry—

And then she’s alive again.

.

She meets Anna again.

Her eyes are wide. Katherine. She says. Katherine remembers the nights spent dancing away; hand-in-hand, shoulders and hips together, through the bass-beats and the soft sounds in the back. Anna, who watches over her in parties she’d go to, that lets Katherine grip her hand whenever men got too close; that snapped back at them whenever they tried anything. Anna of Cleves, respected across England, the once-Queen of Henry’s life.

Oh, sweetheart, Anna says. Her eyes glint: _how did we get here?_ they ask, and she feels a cough, a choke, rest heavily in her throat.

(Katherine wonders if she knows about the—the promiscuity, about the unfaithfulness, about everything they said about her, Katherine Howard, Henry’s Fifth Queen. Whore, disgraced, slut, all of England and then the world beyond; Henry and historians and commonfolk and the rest of them—)

Anna envelops Katherine in a hug. Katherine sobs, quietly, in her shoulder. You’re okay now, Anna whispers into her ear. Don’t cry, Katherine. You’re okay now.

.

She learns. She learns about her past life.

Anna of Cleves teaches her. So does Catherine Parr (who always looks sorry for her after they meet): they guide her. They bring her Agrippa’s treatise about women, first, and then modern books about equality. They coax her out of the ideas of what the men tell her she should be then, of the teachings of Vives, of the internalized condemnations from the Schole House of Women. Aragon hands her leaflets about gaslighting and holds Katherine’s gaze, tells her to ask if there’s anything she doesn’t understand. Jane buys her tales of survivors, and leaves them inside an opaque shelf in Katherine’s room, for whenever she is ready to open them.

And Katherine learns about herself.

Katherine Howard is killed because Mannox took advantage of her, because she is raped by Francis Dereham, because she is forced to marry the King. She lived in a society that wanted women to be silent, obedient, and shamefast. That blamed women for the things men did.

 _Is this true?_ she says to Anna, to Parr, to Aragon, to Jane, to Boleyn. She felt her eyes glimmer—that it was truly not my fault?

 _It was_ , they say, _for all of us._

There are books and stories and made-up things about her. There are historians that call her frivolous, empty-headed, and a prostitute. There are legends and there are tales. She said: _I die a Queen, but_ _I would’ve rather died a wife of Culpepper._

She wants to scream. He was a rapist and a murderer and she was raped, for god’s sake—why the hell would she want to be his wife? And Dereham—that she was raped was ignored, that she stated so was ignored, that she denied a precontract was chalked up to stupidity, that she did not love him: forgotten. That she was a seducer of Mannox; that she was a _child,_ gone.

(Was it so hard for them to say: it was not your choice?)

She screams in her dreams, now. The voices which she had suppressed in her life before, release. She screams when Mannox, when Dereham, when Culpepper, when Henry appears in them. She thrashes and hits and curses with what she could not, before. She wants them to know that they are unwelcome in her head.

There are legends. Elizabeth, age 8, refuses to marry after Katherine’s death.

.

Before, Katherine had thought that Anna of Cleves would not let anybody force her into anything. She realises now that that is not entirely true. They forced her to come to England. Forced her to marry Henry. And forced a divorce as well. Anna of Cleves is just like her; and so are the other Queens.

Catherine of Aragon was forced out of her marriage, because of Henry’s wants. Her cousin, Anne Boleyn, died because she was too forceful, too sharp-tongued, because she had wants of her own. Jane only lived because she was quiet, and even then she ceded to Henry’s wishes in the end. Parr had to apologise to Henry in order to keep herself alive, because she had thoughts of her own and was willing to argue about them.

They were pushed. They were forced. They had to be subservient to live. That was their stories. But this is another life—a new life. They have new stories now, and they have their memories and their lives. They can reclaim their own stories again.

They will sing, they think. They will sing their stories out and no longer would anyone be able to revise them again. And Katherine will say what she wants. She will say her truth. The truth. No matter what. No longer can they be quiet. Not any longer. Not anymore.

The nightmares—the past—persists. It is an unending cycle that leaves her in sweat and terror, in a helplessness she detests. But the other Queens come by, every night, to wake her during her nightmares. Anne Boleyn, her cousin, sleeps by Katherine’s side, to comfort her when she is away. Every-time she wakes: she remembers where she is. Who she has by her side. She remembers that she is safe, and she is alive. Despite how hard it is to breathe.

She will keep breathing again.

**fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> A/N! Please keep reading, because this will be an interesting one. :)
> 
> First of all, major thanks to: the research paper “Jewel of Womanhood: A Feminist Reinterpretation of Queen Katherine Howard”. I couldn’t’ve written this fic without.
> 
> Anyway, you could say that this is my take on Katherine Howard’s history. Certain parts aren’t exactly historically-accurate (ie. Culpepper met Katherine while she was serving Anna of Cleves) and/or are theoretical, but I’ve tried to portray the sequence of events as accurately as possible. My main focus was on rape and the dimensions of victim-blaming, and how it applies to Katherine Howard.
> 
> The insults during Katherine's internal monologue were from noted historians: “wanton-slut”, “stupid and oversexed adolescent,” “this adolescent sexpot,” (Loades), “empty-headed” [“it was not long before Katherine Howard revealed herself as a frivolous, empty-headed young girl who cared for little else but dancing and pretty clothes.”] (Weir), a “42nd Street girl” (aka a “prostitute”) (Starkey), and a “common whore” (Smith). Additionally, views about how Katherine “more than likely seduced [Thomas Culpepper]” and “was clearly the aggressor, not the victim…” is quoted from Smith and Erickson’s view. Finally, the “lewd and naughty [evil] behaviour of the Queen”, and the idea of women “bending the honour of men" was a letter to Henry from Francis I of France.
> 
> There are also a few things mentioned in the fic that I’ll explain here:
> 
> The “Schole House of Women” was a derogatory book about women, which insulted and denounced women as devils and temptresses. Notably, it condemns women who express their anger and frustration out loud, instead of staying silent. It also relieves men of any fault, instead blaming it on the woman. (Even for the time, it was considered a disgusting/horrific piece of literature.)
> 
> It was published in 1542, the year Katherine was executed, so it’s unlikely that she would have actually read it — but I felt that the contents/ideas of the book were quite relevant to the fic as it shows the situation at the time and would influence + explain the ways Katherine thought through the fic.
> 
> Also: Agrippa. You could basically describe Agrippa as a contemporary feminist of the time. In his book (“a treatise of the nobilities and excellence of womankind”), he rebuts Schole House, states that women are equal to men (and some of the ways they are superior), and he believed that women were God’s last (and therefore best) creation. Real cool dude there.
> 
> This is it for this fic for now! I have a few fics planned later on, which will 100% be a lot lighter than this one here (hint: gayness lmao), and if you have prompts, do send them over. :D I literally would die for your thoughts and comments, so if you feel so kind to leave them… I’ll be prepping my soul up for offerings here.


End file.
